The robin hopped about busily pecking the soil and now and then stopped
and looked at them a little. Mary thought his black dewdrop eyes gazed
at her with great curiosity. It really seemed as if he were finding out
all about her. The queer feeling in her heart increased.

"Where did the rest of the brood fly to?" she asked.

"There's no knowin'. The old ones turn 'em out o' their nest an' make
'em fly an' they're scattered before you know it. This one was a knowin'
one an' he knew he was lonely."

Mistress Mary went a step nearer to the robin and looked at him very
hard.

"I'm lonely," she said.

She had not known before that this was one of the things which made her
feel sour and cross. She seemed to find it out when the robin looked at
her and she looked at the robin.

The old gardener pushed his cap back on his bald head and stared at her
a minute.

"Art tha' th' little wench from India?" he asked.

Mary nodded.

"Then no wonder tha'rt lonely. Tha'lt be lonelier before tha's done," he
said.

He began to dig again, driving his spade deep into the rich black garden
soil while the robin hopped about very busily employed.

"What is your name?" Mary inquired.

He stood up to answer her.

"Ben Weatherstaff," he answered, and then he added with a surly chuckle,
"I'm lonely mysel' except when he's with me," and he jerked his thumb
toward the robin. "He's th' only friend I've got."

"I have no friends at all," said Mary. "I never had. My Ayah didn't like
me and I never played with any one."

It is a Yorkshire habit to say what you think with blunt frankness, and
old Ben Weatherstaff was a Yorkshire moor man.

"Tha' an' me are a good bit alike," he said. "We was wove out of th'
same cloth. We're neither of us good lookin' an' we're both of us as
sour as we look. We've got the same nasty tempers, both of us, I'll
warrant."

This was plain speaking, and Mary Lennox had never heard the truth about
herself in her life. Native servants always salaamed and submitted to
you, whatever you did. She had never thought much about her looks, but
she wondered if she was as unattractive as Ben Weatherstaff and she also
wondered if she looked as sour as he had looked before the robin came.
She actually began to wonder also if she was "nasty tempered." She felt
uncomfortable.

Suddenly a clear rippling little sound broke out near her and she turned
round. She was standing a few feet from a young apple-tree and the robi